Review and Recommendation: The Septimus Heap Series

It’s a “Free Week” at 4F,1H and it also happens to be Holy Week, the week before Easter. For me, that means plenty of house and food prep. This year finds me doing less and moving slower than I normally would, but still enjoying myself…and I still find it busy.

So this week, I would like to give a quick review of a charming series of books,[please don’t let the next part stop you from continuing], which I have read on the advice of my grandson:The Septimus Heap series.

This delightful series is marketed toward the “Tweens”, ( post kiddie, pre-YA), but unless the kids reading them are really astute and mindful, they will miss a great deal of the nuances, personalities and humor within the lengthy books.

(I believe that other “Seniors” would find them as enjoyable as I have.)

The book page count sometimes into the 600s, but are such enjoyable reads, you never dread the numbers, but the ends. My grandson zipped through them when he was 13, and was not in the least self-conscious about picking them up from the junior book section.

English author Angie Sage has created a world with people who were human, but their world is not ours. Although it is another ‘boy wizard’ series, it has very little in common story-wise with Harry Potter. (That is not to imply that I do not love the HP novels and movies.)

As in the Potter books, evil is always evil, honor, friendship and family are to be maintained, help and forgiveness are a norm. However, Sage’s world is gentler.

Beside the enjoyable humor within the books, there are few truly evil people. The ones who seem bad are often misguided or are converted one way or another. (One terrible character has his memory wiped. Because he was indeed terrible, the ‘good guys’ replaced his thoughts with the understanding that he wants to join the circus to become a buffoon! With the way it is told, it is a LOL moment.)

Adults and older children would get much more out of the subtle hints given throughout the storyline and the continuity of the characters’ characters than younger readers. The situations, surroundings and personalities are incorporated so seamlessly within the series that I seldom saw the significance of many of them until their revelations, and that is one of the best recommendations I can give for any story. Far too often, the plots are all-too obvious to me.

I cannot even begin to describe the artful, and almost continual, dry humor added throughout the story.

I hope that if you have a child in your life who likes to read, you will consider reading this series with them.
If you have a child who doesn’t like to read or has problems reading, I hope you will consider reading this series to them.
I hope you will consider reading this series for yourself.

I wish all of our Christian readers a Happy Easter!